The Generalized Method of Wavelet Moments with eXogenous inputs: a fast approach for the analysis of GNSS position time series

Abstract

The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) daily position time series are often described as the sum of stochastic processes and geophysical signals which allow to study global and local geodynamical effects such as plate tectonics, earthquakes, or ground water variations. In this work, we propose to extend the Generalized Method of Wavelet Moments (GMWM) to estimate the parameters of linear models with correlated residuals. This statistical inferential framework is applied to GNSS daily position time-series data to jointly estimate functional (geophysical) as well as stochastic noise models. Our method is called GMWMX, with X standing for eXogenous variables: it is semi-parametric, computationally efficient and scalable. Unlike standard methods such as the widely used maximum likelihood estimator (MLE), our methodology offers statistical guarantees, such as consistency and asymptotic normality, without relying on strong parametric assumptions. At the Gaussian model, our results (theoretical and obtained in simulations) show that the estimated parameters are similar to the ones obtained with the MLE. The computational performances of our approach have important practical implications. Indeed, the estimation of the parameters of large networks of thousands of GNSS stations (some of them being recorded over several decades) quickly becomes computationally prohibitive. Compared to standard likelihood-based methods, the GMWMX has a considerably reduced algorithmic complexity of order $O\{log(n\left)n\right\}$ for a time series of length n. Thus, the GMWMX appears to provide a reduction in processing time of a factor of 10-1000 compared to likelihood-based methods depending on the considered stochastic model, the length of the time series and the amount of missing data. As a consequence, the proposed method allows the estimation of large-scale problems within minutes on a standard computer. We validate the performances of our method via Monte Carlo simulations by generating GNSS daily position time series with missing observations and we consider composite stochastic noise models including processes presenting long-range dependence such as power law or Matérn processes. The advantages of our method are also illustrated using real time series from GNSS stations located in the Eastern part of the USA.

Keywords: Geodynamics; Long-range dependence; Maximum likelihood estimator; Tectonic; Two-step estimation; Variance decomposition.